The terror next time

Statements out of North Korea and Iran last week confront the United States and other freedom-loving nations with a frightening prospect: Two of the world’s most dangerous regimes are determined to wield nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s claim already to have "nukes" came on the heels of an announcement by the Iranian mullahocracy that nothing will prevent it from realizing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Should we be worried?

The short answer is absolutely. After all, these are two governments whose state policy is hatred for America. Nuclear weapons in the hands of megalomaniacal tyrannies who are animated by this hatred and who are armed with ballistic missiles poses a unique – and intolerable – threat.

A Different Sort of Threat

The danger is not simply the prospect one or more of these rogue states’ nuclear weapons could be used to destroy an American city – or perhaps an allied capital in the Mideast or Europe. Such an attack could be conducted by other means, with more prosaic delivery means such as trucks, ships or aircraft.

A blue-ribbon, congressionally mandated commission recently described an altogether different sort of nuclear attack, one made possible by the detonation high above the United States of a ballistic missile-delivered weapon. The panel was charged with "assessing the threat to the United States from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack." It concluded that the EMP effects of such an attack at altitudes between 40 and 400 miles above this country could so severely disrupt, both directly and indirectly, electronics and electrical systems as to create a "damage level…sufficient to be catastrophic to the Nation." Worse yet, the commission concluded that "our current vulnerability invites attack." (View the executive summary of this classified report).

The EMP Threat Commission recommends steps be taken urgently to reduce that vulnerability by protecting electrical, water, telecommunications and other infrastructures against the crippling effects of electromagnetic pulse. The same needs to be done with our military which is also woefully unprepared for EMP attack.

Failure to take such steps could mean that a single North Korean or Iranian missile, possibly launched from a ship off the coast of the United States, could instantly transform this country from an advanced 21st Century society to an 18th Century one. It is hard to imagine a more devastating form of terror than that entailed in the dislocation, hardship and destruction that would accompany an America returned to a pre-industrial state – except now with its population crowded into cities that could not function, with a military unable to protect us or to maintain order.

America the Vulnerable

One of the reasons we are so acutely vulnerable to EMP attack is because we largely stopped worrying about this phenomenon thirteen years ago. In 1992, the United States adopted a moratorium on nuclear testing, thus precluding the most rigorous and reliable means of establishing the susceptibility of electronic systems to electromagnetic effects.

The folly of foregoing such testing has only been compounded by the reality that our moratorium has also had very deleterious effects on our nuclear deterrent. For example, we no longer can be certain that the weapons in our arsenal will work as they are supposed to. We are reduced to relying on what amounts to informed scientific guesswork based on computer simulations. Guesses are no substitute for the certitude we need when it comes to such life-and-death matters.

One thing is certain: Our stockpile is not as safe and reliable as we could make it. Without realistic testing, we can only introduce changes in the components or designs of existing weapons at the risk of further degrading confidence they will work.

What is more, we are unable to introduce new designs that would be better suited to countering threats posed by countries like Iran and North Korea than the hugely destructive weapons developed more than twenty years ago to counter targets in the Soviet Union.

Worst of all, these costs have been incurred for no good reason. Neither North Korea nor Iran have, as far as we know, conducted nuclear tests on their way to joining the "nuclear club." Consequently, it is now indisputable that the United States’ foreswearing underground testing has not had the promised effect — impeding proliferation.

In an important analysis published recently by the Center for Security Policy, Vice Admiral Robert Monroe USN (Ret.), a former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, argues persuasively that if we are to have any hope of preventing proliferation in the future, the United States must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent – and undertake the associated testing, developmental and industrial actions.

Finally, notwithstanding the latest setback in testing the Nation’s preliminary anti-missile defense system, the perfecting and fielding of such capabilities must continue – and be expanded to include sea-, air- and space-based assets. The threat of an EMP attack is hardly the only reason for ensuring that ballistic missiles cannot be used to do harm to this country, but it is a particularly compelling one.

The Bottom Line

In the end, only regime change in Iran and North Korea is likely to diminish the threat posed by these nations’ governments. We had better be doing everything possible to encourage such an outcome. In the meantime, it would be irresponsible to invite EMP-induced disaster by remaining unable either to defend against or to deter such an attack and its effects.